Blood Rose (33 page)

‘Yes, towards Rooibank. There’s an oasis there. Some German count built a castle for the love of his life and she never came. So he donated it to the Catholic Church, specifying that it be run as a convent. Now it’s a hospice.’

‘There’s a lesson in that,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’m not quite sure what.’

‘Why do you ask?’ said Tamar.

Clare picked up the photograph of Mara and the five-a-side team and pointed to Ronaldo. ‘A boy who played in Mara’s team was out there. George Meyer told me about him. I went to talk to him.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Tamar.

‘Nothing. He’s on his way out,’ said Clare. ‘Full-blown Aids. Too far gone for treatment.’

‘He’s the last boy alive,’ Riedwaan said. ‘Her whole team, redcarded.’

‘There’s something else,’ said Clare. ‘The Mother Superior told me a woman had visited him. She thought it was one of the Christian Mission ladies, but I went past there and they have no record of anyone visiting.’

A sudden gust of the east wind sprayed sand against the office window. Clare jumped, then continued: ‘His hands were infected when he came in, blisters all over the palms. His illness was triggered by exhausting himself doing some kind of digging.’

‘Digging where?’ asked Tamar. ‘None of those kids would be picked up to work. First, nobody would trust them, and, second, if anyone did hire them, they’d be bust under the child labour law – one of the many unintended consequences of a progressive constitution.’

‘Catch 22,’ said Clare.

‘I wonder what they were digging for,’ Riedwaan said. He opened the files of autopsy photographs and sorted out the close-ups. ‘Look at this.’ Kaiser Apollis and Lazarus Beukes both had thin, livid marks across their palms.

‘Could be blisters,’ said Clare, looking at the photographs. ‘Easy to pass over in a homeless child whose hands and feet would be rough and cracked.’

‘You get anything else from your interview with Juan Carlos?’ asked Tamar.

‘His phone.’ Clare held it up. ‘I want to check out his story about the night Mara went missing. I’ve asked Ragnar Johansson to keep him on board until you’ve decided if you want to
keep him here. In the meantime, I want to check some phone records.’

‘There’s a place out in the industrial area that’ll figure it out for you in no time.’ Tamar wrote down the address. ‘Cell City. They’ll help you out.’

‘Did you talk to Van Wyk?’ Clare asked Tamar, folding the piece of paper.

Tamar shook her head. ‘He’s still out of cellphone range. He’s scouring the desert with Goagab, but I did find Chesney, the name we saw painted on the cave. Turns out he’s Van Wyk’s nephew.’

The mention of Chesney’s name made Clare shiver: Chesney, Minki, LaToyah, the heat and the stench of the dead cat. ‘What did he say?’ she asked.

‘Not much at first,’ said Tamar. ‘But Elias can be persuasive when he needs to be. He convinced Chesney that it’d be simpler if he just showed him a couple of files, his web cam, and some other incriminating evidence. The girl you saw, LaToyah, is fifteen, so as far as Van Wyk goes, it’ll be a fairly straightforward case of statutory rape.’

‘All we need to do is find him then,’ said Clare.

‘What’s this?’ Riedwaan asked. ‘Van Wyk been cradle-snatching?’

‘A cop getting freebies off the girls he protects. Oldest trick in the policeman’s book,’ said Tamar. ‘How about you find this killer now.’ She was standing in the doorway, keys in hand. ‘My water broke half an hour ago and I’m off to have this baby in peace.’

Riedwaan went pale. ‘We’ll take the bike.’ He tossed Clare the spare helmet.

Outside, the sun sparkled off the razor wire, the snagged plastic flapping, its colour bleaching in the heat. Even the black slagheap across the road managed to give off an ebony gleam.

Clare slipped her arms around Riedwaan and her hands under his jacket.

‘It is better with you here,’ she said as they drove through town.

‘I was waiting for you to say that,’ said Riedwaan.

‘Only because I like having a driver,’ she teased him. ‘There it is. Cell City.’

The two chinless wonders who ran the cellphone shop looked as if they could hack into the Pentagon. Darren was blond, his hair hanging in greasy rats’ tails over the faded picture on his T-shirt – some heavy metal group doomed to permanent obscurity, Clare hoped. She explained that they wanted to know where Mara’s last SMS had come from.

‘No problem,’ he said.

‘You want a list of all the numbers called? Texts?’ asked Carl. He had dark hair, and was as soft and blubbery as his friend was bony. ‘I can download the pictures too.’

‘That’d be great,’ said Clare, writing down Mara’s number. ‘How long will it take?’

‘I can do that for you straight away,’ he said. ‘Darren’ll take a bit of time, but this is a small town, so there’s just a couple of thousand cell users. Do you want to come back?’

‘We’ll wait.’

Darren beamed up at them from behind his laptop. ‘Go get some coffee there.’ He pointed to a Portuguese café across the road. ‘A watched hacker never cracks.’

Carl found this hilarious. He emitted a series of stricken hoots that passed for a laugh.

‘Come on,’ Riedwaan said to Clare. ‘We’ll get some coffee.’ The café served unexpectedly good coffee. They took their cups and some rolls to the only table outside.

‘So, tell me about Van Wyk,’ said Riedwaan.

Clare smiled grimly as she told him of Van Wyk’s sidelines in extortion and amateur porn. Nothing pleased her more than ridding the world of another corrupt bully.

They had just finished eating when Carl undulated across the road. He grabbed a Coke and a Peppermint Crisp on his way to their table.

‘Darren,’ he said admiringly. ‘He’s a fucking wizard.’ He placed a single sheet of paper on the greasy tablecloth. A list of numbers in one column, coordinates in the other. Carl bit off half of his chocolate bar before pointing to the last number. ‘There you go. The SMS you were looking for. That’s it.’

‘Where was it sent from?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘The airport tower is where it’s first logged.’

‘So she was there?’

‘Who was there?’ Carl shovelled the second half of the bar into his mouth and washed it down with Coke.

‘Mara Thomson. The girl who sent the message.’

‘This one?’ Carl scrolled through the photos in Juan Carlos’s cellphone, stopping when he got to one of Mara, naked on a sand dune, smiling at the phone camera.

‘That’s the one.’

‘So pretty,’ said Carl wistfully. ‘What’s she done that you’re looking for her?’

‘It’s what she hasn’t done that’s worrying me,’ said Clare. ‘She left Walvis Bay, but never arrived in London. Her boyfriend claims that the last he heard from her was this SMS from the airport.’

‘Well, from the tower closest to the airport. But that covers quite a range out there. It could be anywhere from the Kuiseb Delta to Rooibank.’

‘These other numbers?’ Clare asked.

‘Recent calls. A couple to Spain. The others are all local numbers. Looks like whoever’s phone this is had this girl’s number on speed dial.’

‘I tried to call her earlier,’ said Clare. ‘It just says the number is unavailable and to try again later.’

‘That means she’s out of range or her phone is off,’ Carl explained. ‘Or her battery’s dead.’

‘If Mara was in the vicinity of the airport,’ said Clare, ‘then why did she never go in?’

‘Oh no,’ said Carl, excited at the prospect of playing detective, ‘she got on the plane all right. Check this out.’ He pointed to a column on the next page, listing all the SMS messages. ‘This is what she said.’

Riedwaan looked at the screen:
On the plane. Sorry. I love U. X Mara.

‘I saw that,’ said Clare. ‘But it seemed pretty standard to me. Anybody could have sent that text.’

‘Amateurish as a cover,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Someone was going to phone when she didn’t get to London.’

‘But if you go missing in the desert, it can be a long time before anyone finds you,’ said Clare, deciphering the columns of digital information that Darren had teased from the phone.

‘Unless you’re a homeless boy. Then after two days you’re stuck up like a billboard advertising the fact that someone really didn’t like you.’

‘Have a look at this.’ Clare pointed to the time the message was received: nine-twenty.

Riedwaan and Carl looked at her blankly.

‘Her plane was two hours late. Nobody was even on the plane until eleven.’

Riedwaan parked his bike outside the station. Clare was heading for the door before he even had a chance to switch off the engine.

‘That schoolteacher you mentioned in McGregor,’ Riedwaan called after her. ‘Did she marry again?’

‘Darlene?’ Clare turned around, remembering that she had meant to talk to her again.

Riedwaan nodded.

‘No, she’d had enough of men after her first husband. She just shed her married name. Why do you—?’

The shrill sound of Clare’s phone interjected. She took it out of her pocket and looked at the flashing screen. ‘Tertius Myburgh,’ she said to Riedwaan. ‘My pollen expert. I thought he’d vanished. Let me take this.’ She held the receiver to her ear and nodded a greeting at the receptionist as she entered the station.

Riedwaan followed her down the passage in a daze, his manner unusually calm.

Clare sat down at her desk and disconnected. ‘He’s got my results,’ she said, reaching for a mapbook. ‘I’m going to meet him at Dolphin Beach. It’s halfway between Walvis Bay and Swakopmund.’

‘Can you handle this on your own?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘There’s something I must do.’

‘I’ll call you when I’m back,’ said Clare, grabbing her keys. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To see your ballet-dancing divorcée,’ Riedwaan smiled. ‘Darlene Ruyters. To find out what she can tell me about centaurs and phoenixes.’

One kick would have ripped the newly installed chain out of the door, but Riedwaan rang the doorbell.

‘Yes?’ Darlene Ruyters opened the door a crack.

‘Captain Faizal. Police.’ Riedwaan always felt stupid holding up his badge like an American movie cop, but he did it anyway. People watched so much television these days they expected it. Darlene put out a hand for the badge before sliding back the chain and letting him in. Riedwaan stepped into the gloomy hallway. The smell of a thousand houses he had visited: the combination of yesterday’s cooking and fear.

‘Where is he, Darlene?’

Darlene’s eyes widened. ‘There’s nobody here.’ She crossed her arms. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

Pushing past her, Riedwaan went down the passage. He opened the first door, Darlene’s bedroom. Peach nylon lace and pale-green walls. A worn, shaggy carpet and a pile of teddy bears on the bed. He opened the next door: a bed, a table, a chair, a lamp. Not a thing out of place, but the windows closed, and the smell of a man in the stale air.

‘Where’s he gone?’ Riedwaan demanded.

Darlene was right behind him, her dark hair framing her pale, once-beautiful face. ‘You can see. There’s no one,’ she said, turning away, but Riedwaan caught her arm and swung her around again, light as a bird against his arm. The bruises on her wrists had faded to shadows. Riedwaan nudged her collar
away from her neck. There was a livid contusion on her clavicle. He felt the back of her head. She winced. The skin there was broken.

‘Tell me where he is,’ said Riedwaan. ‘Your house guest, who left such a charming thank-you gift.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Darlene whispered. Riedwaan let her go. She swayed on her bare feet.

‘The guy who hired the car. Centaur Consulting,’ said Riedwaan. He pulled the car-hire forms out of his pocket and showed them to her. ‘Fifty-three 2nd Avenue. Your address. He hasn’t returned the car yet. Your ex-husband.’

‘Malan.’ The name twisted Darlene’s mouth as if it were poison. She slid down the wall until she was folded, small as a child, on the floor.

Riedwaan was unmoved. ‘When did he leave?’

Darlene stopped resisting, a drowning woman too tired to fight any more. ‘The day before yesterday,’ she whispered.

‘Where did he go?’ Riedwaan knelt down in front of her. He lifted her chin so that she had to look at him.

‘To cash in his pension.’ Darlene laughed, her bitterness corrosive.

‘What’re you talking about?’ said Riedwaan. ‘I’m out of time.’

‘What are you going to do? Hit me too?’ She looked him up and down. ‘I’m an expert in that area and
you
,’ she spat, ‘haven’t got it in you.’

‘Why did Malan come here to you?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘I don’t know. He didn’t explain. He wanted somewhere to stay. Somewhere where he wouldn’t be seen. I don’t know.’ Darlene got up slowly, the pain of movement making her wince.

‘You didn’t refuse?’

‘This is what I got
without
arguing.’ Darlene unbuttoned her
blouse. Her delicate body was black and blue to the waist. ‘I thought, it can’t last forever. And it didn’t. He left.’

Riedwaan put out his hands and gently buttoned up her blouse again. ‘Where will I find him?’ he asked.

‘If he’s not out in the desert then I hope to God he’s gone.’

‘The desert?’

‘The sand on his boots. He made me clean them for old times’ sake. They were full of the golden dust you find further in. Fool’s gold.’

‘Why would he be back? Think, Darlene.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But if I know them at all, I can guess.’

‘Them?’ Riedwaan took her by the shoulders. She winced again.

‘Malan. Hofmeyr.’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘Except he’s dead now.’

‘Janus Renko?’ Riedwaan tested.

A shadow passed over Darlene’s face. ‘I haven’t heard
that
name in a long time.’

‘You haven’t seen him?’ asked Riedwaan.

‘Not since the South African army left, and please, God, I won’t see him again. He made my husband and Hofmeyr look like Sunday school teachers.’

Darlene took a packet out of her back pocket and fingered out a cigarette. Riedwaan held out his lighter for her.

‘What was this pension?’ he asked.

Darlene shook her head again. ‘Guess then, Darlene.

Guess.’ Riedwaan kept the urgency out of his voice. It was like coaxing a wild bird to take food from his hand.